


Quiet

by canadianstuck



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Fluff, M/M, sometimes my friends start shipping things so i write them fics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-02 05:36:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16299107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canadianstuck/pseuds/canadianstuck
Summary: Skyhold is too loud and there's too much to do, until Krem starts carving out little quiet moments for the Inquisitor.





	Quiet

There isn’t a lot of quiet at Skyhold. Really, if there’s quiet, there’s almost certainly a problem. Building an army takes time. Effort. Constant activity, from dawn until dusk, and then through the night. Twice the effort, if the army you’re building is technically unsanctioned and being built in the most difficult to access place possible.  
   That doesn’t leave a lot of time for relaxation.  
   Inquisitor Lavellan—and how odd is it, to be called “Inquisitor”, instead of literally anything else—knows this well. He misses the peace of the forest, the quiet of hunting. Really, he’s still not clear how he got to be Inquisitor in the first place. An accident in an explosion, a right place at the wrong time, and now he’s expected to lead an army. Not just any army either.  
   The army that’s supposed to save the world.  
   That’s a lot of pressure.  
   Breaks are few and far between. Soldiers need training. Equipment needs to be ordered and inspected. Reports need to be read and responded to. Medical tents need to be inspected, and the dying need to be comforted.  
   Medical inspections are the worst duty.  
   On top of all of that, Lavellan knows he needs to be known around camp. Needs to be personable, likeable, but also a leader. That’s harder than it sounds, especially when it takes so much time. A drink is never just a drink, because he has to network, has to make himself known, has to impress.  
   It’s exhausting.  
   The rare nights he has alone do nothing to relax him either. They’re filled with worry. How can he ask men to die for him when even he isn’t quite sure what exactly he’s asking them to die for? Questions and ghosts chase him from uneasy sleep every few minutes.  
   Really, it’s easier just to be out amongst the people and the noise.  
   It’s harder to think, when he’s surrounded by noise.

   The sun hasn’t quite set on Skyhold when Lavellan makes his way into Herald’s Rest. There’s irony somewhere in that, or there would be if he wasn’t too tired to find it. A place that’s a rest, a respite, for everyone but him. Never rest. Always more to do.  
In this case, the order of the evening is getting to know the new mercenary group. Bull’s Chargers. He’s talked to their leader a few times in passing, and the lieutenant—Krem? Krem—when he first offered the services of the Chargers to the Inquisition. The rest though, are a mystery.  
   Herald’s Rest is already full, laughter and song echoing off the walls. The Chargers are the loudest group by far, packed into a corner. They sprawl on every conceivable surface. Chairs, tables, a few crates, and leaning up against posts. Tight knit, that much is clear. Probably why they work so well together. Their reputation is certainly fearsome, and from what Lavellan understands, it’s well deserved.  
   At least they’re loud enough to keep him from thinking too hard.  
   He orders an ale, something easy to drink and hard to get drunk on if he drinks it slow and walks over, all smiles. There’s a knot between his shoulders, and shadows under his eyes, but in the dim light of the first, he doubts they’ll see.  
   No one ever does.  
   “Evening,” he says, lifting his glass in a toast. A chorus of greetings echo his own, and his smile becomes a shade more genuine.  
   Loud and friendly, more or less. This might be the closest thing he gets to a rest in a week.  
   Two weeks.  
   However long it takes to build an army.  
   It only takes a few questions before Iron Bull is leading the conversation, his men putting in their own comments with laughter and ease. That makes it easy, in a way. Lavellan can sit back, sip his ale, and say, “Oh?” now and again, and he’s making friends. Or at least being friendly enough to follow to war.  
   At some point, he stops paying attention. Maybe he never was to begin with. He continues on autopilot, nodding and sipping his ale, and wondering if it was always like this. Wondering what would have happened if he hadn’t been at the Conclave. If he stayed in the forests, with his bow and his peace and quiet. Maybe—  
   “You okay chief?” The voice is vaguely familiar, and startles Lavellan out of his thoughts. When he looks up, he’s looking at the mildly concerned face of one Cremisius Aclassi.  
   “Fine,” he manages to mumble, because really, he is fine, he’s just tired, it’s just been a long day, a long few days, and—  
   “Here, I’ll trade you spots.” Krem doesn’t give him a chance to argue, doesn’t give him a chance to protest. Instead, he just gets out of his chair and nudges Lavellan’s shoulder until he sinks down into the chair.  
   The whole exchange is a few seconds long. There’s nothing more to it, and Krem continues as if it never happened in the first place. But for the rest of the night, he quietly directs conversation away from Lavellan, letting him be present and seen and being friendly without having to do anything at all. Just before Lavellan gets up to go to bed, Krem leans over and murmurs, “I know what it’s like to get too much attention you don’t want.”  
   It’s a small gesture, but Lavellan doesn’t have the words to even begin to express how grateful he is for it. Instead, he nods quietly, murmurs a thank you, and finds himself in his room a while later, a little befuddled and feeling more like he’s had a rest than he has in weeks.

   The incident fades from Lavellan’s mind as the days go on. It was a small kindness, and as much as he appreciated it, he can’t let himself be distracted from his duties. His duties that he isn’t even sure he wants or should have, because really, there must be someone better in Thedas for this.  
   Anyone at all.  
   Anyone willing to take over for even two days, so he can sleep and drink a proper mug of hot tea and absorb the quiet of the forest.  
   He gets back from a trip, bones sore from the riding and the fighting and the way closing rifts jars his whole body with the wrongness of it. Sleep is what he wants most of all, sleep and a hot meal and peace, but he can’t manage any of those things, because there are soldiers training, and while he’s been away, new soldiers have joined. If he wants them to follow him into battle, he must be known to them, must make a point of knowing what they fight for and why.  
   So he stops in his rooms long enough to drop off his travelling back and change from armour into more formal clothes—nothing fancy really. Black and green and sturdy, well-tailored from woollen panels, with only a few hints of embroidery at the cuffs and collar. If it were up to him, he would wear his armour, or at least just plain linen or wool, but Josephine insists that he must be presentable at all time. This is his compromise. Plain, but fancier than it might be.  
   Besides, he thinks with dry amusement, the shadows under his eyes must almost match his outfit by now.  
   There’s time to wash his face and hands, and to sneak a roll full of nuts and dried fruit from the kitchens, and then he’s down in the yard, wondering if getting crumbs on his coat is considered uncouth enough that soldiers won’t follow him to battle.  
Really, he shouldn’t get any time to himself to think, because his head fills with these sort of silly thoughts.  
   The training yard is loud with the ring of metal and the dull thud of wood and the shouts of soldiers. Dust hangs think in the air, kicked up from the rings. Slowly, Lavellan makes his way from group to group. Gone are the days Cullen managed all the training personally. There are too many now, and they are trained by those Cullen himself trained. Or they practice on their own, if they have some training to speak of.  
   At the end of the yard, the Chargers are doing training of their own, occasionally pausing in their training to show a move to one of the general infantry. From there, it slowly filters down the lines.  
   Lavellan has to admit, the Chargers are useful for more than just shock troops.  
   A flash of sunlight catches his eye, and he turns just in time to see Krem flip another bigger man over his shoulder, an easy grin on his face.  
The grin is almost as bright as his armour.  
   Lavellan is about to turn and be on his way when Krem happens to glance over and catch his eye. His smile widens a touch and he waves. “Getting any sleep yet?” he calls over, even as he holds out a hand to help up the man on the ground.  
   Small gestures of kindness. Little things overlooked as a passing moment.  
   “Ask me again when we close the Breach,” Lavellan calls back, the ghost of a smile curling on his lips.  
Krem laughs, bright and loud, and then he’s turning his attention back to his training partner, and Lavellan is walking on, his thoughts for once not scattered. They’re concentrated instead on that smile, and that laugh, and the small kindnesses Krem doesn’t even seem to notice he gives out.

   More days drift by. The workload increases.  
   Lavellan’s time and money and skills do not seem to reciprocate.  
   If anything, he is getting more and more tired. There is so much to do, raising an army he never asked to lead. The responsibility of the mark on his hand is his, and his alone.  
   Oh, how he wishes it weren’t.  
   But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.  
   Even when he manages to find time to sleep, it’s uneasy and full of dreams. Demons, offering him money or power or glory, or just the chance to die quickly instead of screaming on the ground. He doesn’t know if they’re hovering on the edge of the Fade, or if they’re memories bleeding into dreams, or just honest stress.  
   Whatever the reason, some days the offer is tempting.  
   One evening, he gets a few hours to himself. No reports, nothing. Just peace and quiet, except Skyhold is never quiet, not really. Peace and quiet, and extra time for sleep, except he can’t sleep because his mind chases itself in circles, a dragon eating its own tail.  
   After an hour—or is it two? He isn’t always good at guessing at time anymore—he pulls on his formalwear again and heads down to Herald’s Rest. He doesn’t want drink, and he doesn’t want noise, but there at least those two things will keep him from thinking too hard. He gets an ale, and sequesters himself on the top floor, near the railing. From there, he can lean over and watch the whole bar below.  
   The mug is empty, and the bar below is starting to empty too, but Lavellan isn’t ready to go back to his rooms yet. Not with the ghosts of demons and dreams and the dead still lingering. Just a few more minutes to dawdle, and then he’ll go. A few more minutes turns into five. Ten. Twenty. He’s half dozing now, leaning against the railing, when the stairs creak. Without thinking about it, he’s reaching for his belt knife, wondering who is about to slit his throat. By the time he figures it out, he flushes.  
It’s just Krem, standing there with a pair of mugs.  
   He waves sheepishly and returns to his study of the people below. Much to his surprise, Krem makes his way over to the table and plunks a mug down in front of him. He sniffs it, expecting ale. Instead, he’s met with tea. “Want to talk about it?” Krem says, hooking his foot around the leg of a chair and pulling it out, and then he’s sitting across from Lavellan and nudging the mug a little closer to him.  
   “Talk about what?” Lavellan says, wrapping his hands around the mug.  
   “Why you’re sleeping here instead of your room, and why the shadows under your eyes keep getting worse.” “I didn’t know you noticed.” The tea is something that is somehow both soothing and spicy, easy to choke down, unlike most things these days.  
Krem shrugs. He’s not wearing armour for once, just a simple linen shirt. “I notice a lot of things.” There’s silence for a minute. Lavellan weighs telling Krem, sharing the burden. He wishes he could, but the mark cannot be shared, not when it’s stuck to his hand. Not when the light leaks faintly out from the gloves he’s started wearing all the time.  
   “What did you do, before the Inquisition?” Krem asks, sipping his own mug.  
   The question startles Lavellan from his thinking. “What?” Krem repeats it in the same easy tone as before. “What did you do, before the Inquisition?”  
   Lavellan blinks for a moment, caught off guard. “I was a hunter.”  
   “That’s why you’re good with a bow. Did you use snares too?”  
   “…Yes.” Lavellan isn’t quite sure why they’re having this conversation. Why they’re having any conversation that isn’t about the army or how he plans to use the Chargers or training or something. Why they’re having a conversation just for the sake of… having conversation.  
   They talk for a while longer. Eventually, Lavellan stops treating every question with suspicion and starts offering actual answers. It’s the least he can do, because he recognizes that this, like so many other things Krem does, is a moment of kindness. Offering solace from the onslaught of everything around them by talking about innocuous, silly things, in a way no one else has for weeks. Months even.  
   When he finally makes it up to the tower, Lavellan sleeps without dreams for the first time since the Breach opened.

   It goes on this way for a while. Every time Lavellan thinks he’s about to burst from the stress, along comes Krem with some little gesture. Tea, or ale, or a joke, or conversation for the sake of it.  
   At some point, it stops being a general kindness. Lavellan starts to treasure those moments.  
   Starts to look for them.  
   Starts to wonder if he should seek out Krem and offer something in return.  
   Maybe though it’s still just Krem being nice. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything. And even if it does mean something, it’s not like there’s time for anything to happen. If Lavellan thought there was work to do before, it’s nothing to the work to do now.  
   But maybe when it’s over, he’ll think about buying Krem a drink.

   They left a lot of good people on the field.  
   Lavellan can’t reconcile the bloodless bodies with the mission. With what he’s supposed to be doing.  
   How can he ask them to die for him, when he doesn’t even really know what he’s doing?  
   They make it back to Skyhold, and they have funeral rites, and they send messages where they are needed, for the bodies they could identify.  
   There were so many that they couldn’t.  
   Sleep comes in five minutes bursts, and sometime in the night he gives up entirely. Herald’s Rest is closed, so he can’t go sit there, but he walks through the yard, trying to ignore the faint noises coming from the tents full of soldiers getting their wounds stitched up.  
   “Thought you might come this way chief,” a familiar voice says as Krem gets up from a bench.  
   Lavellan startles. “What are you doing here?” he manages to ask. He feels strangely underdressed, in his plain linen shirt, with none of the colour or finery of his usual wear.  
   “You don’t sleep on the good days,” Krem says. He holds out a mug of tea that he got Maker knows where. “Today wasn’t a good day.”  
   Lavellan stares at him and slowly reaches out and takes the mug, wondering if this is a dream. Under the moonlight, he can’t help but notice the sharp lines of Krem’s jaw, or the way his eyes catch the light.  
   An act of kindness that seems too planned to be for just anyone.  
“   Let’s go for a walk,” Krem says, wrapping at arm around Lavellan’s shoulders and gently steering him up onto the wall, to a little stretch that’s more or less abandoned and looks out over the valley below.  
   It’s too far away to hear the wounded.  
   It is a place that, for the first time in months, is quiet. Honestly and truly quiet, only the rustle of branches in the breeze disturbing the snowy peaks.  
   “I…” Lavellan starts, staring out over the mountains without seeing them.  
   Krem nudges him into a sitting position. “It’s alright chief. You don’t need to say anything. You just need a break.” “Why?” Lavellan manages to ask.  
   Krem appears to be slightly confused by the question. “I mean, I don’t think I’m wrong in saying you need a break. You still aren’t really sleeping, and based on the talk you’re stretched as thin as you can get.”  
   Lavellan shakes his head, raising his mug as if he means to take a sip. Before he can though, his hand drifts back to his lap. “I mean, why this? Why me? These things that you do. Why do you do them?”  
   Alright, not his most eloquent speech ever, but hey, he’s too tired, too beyond caring to notice.  
   “Why do you think I do them?” Krem asks.  
   Lavellan blows out a soft breath. “I don’t know.”  
   Krem’s laugh is high and bright, like the stars up above the two of them. “Would you prefer I stop, so you don’t have to be quite so confused?”  
   “No.” It comes out so quickly, so assuredly, that Lavellan startles even himself with the force of it. Softer, he adds, “No, I don’t want you to stop.” He looks up then, eyes wandering over the way Krem looks, the way the pieces of him fit together to make the man that is so confusing and yet so encouraging.  
   The corner of Krem’s mouth twitches up in a smile. “I won’t stop then.” “Good.”  
   There is silence again on the wall, and slowly Krem lowers himself to sit beside Lavellan. They watch the valley together, the way the sky begins to lighten one half-shade at a time. It’s beautiful.  
   It’s not the thing that really has Lavellan’s attention.  
   He is aware of Krem beside him, the warmth coming off him, so unlike the surrounding chill. He is aware too of the silver the moonlight is threading into Krem’s hair, the way it gilds him like a statue of a saint. In fact, he’s so entranced that he doesn’t realize he’s staring until Krem turns and catches his gaze, the ghost of that smile curling on his lips again. “Figure out why I keep doing nice things for you?” he asks in a teasing voice.  
   It takes a moment for Lavellan to find his voice. “No,” he says, but it comes out almost like a question.  
   Almost like a prayer.  
   He’s suddenly very aware of how little space is actually between them. The wind whistles through the gap, only a few inches wide. Without meaning to, he’s leaning in a little, trying to close that gap. He isn’t sure what he’ll do when he closes it.  
   Something important. Or idiotic. Could go either way.  
   “No guesses?” Krem says, laughing again, and he’s not leaning away, so Lavellan keeps drifting closer and closer.  
   “No,” Lavellan says, a little more confidently this time, and then leans in the rest of the way to steal a kiss.  
Krem’s mouth is warm against his, and he tastes tea and something spicy, like peppermint almost, and the kiss lasts less than a second and a thousand years all at the same time. “Sorry,” he mumbles when he pulls away, suddenly embarrassed. Is being tired a good excuse for losing control like that? What about stress? Or—  
   Krem’s hand is warm on his cheek, and distracts him from thinking himself into a spiral. “Don’t apologize. That’s why I was being nice,” Krem says, and pulls him close for another kiss.  
   The sun is coming up, the first rays lighting up the wall. There is so much more to do, so much to plan. And yet, despite not sleeping, Lavellan feels rested enough to do those things for the first time in weeks.  
   As long as he can come back here, to the wall, to Krem?  
   He’ll be just fine.


End file.
